Microsoft Teams has seen phenomenal growth over the last two years, driven primarily by the need for video and chat collaboration tools to facilitate remote working.
Businesses are now looking to make Teams part of their long-term communications strategy, with the addition of voice services the next step for many.
Jason Telles, Presales Engineer at net2phone, explained to UC Today that this trend started to accelerate in 2021, largely because the nature of cloud-based phone solutions means they can be delivered in an affordable way to businesses of all sizes.
“What has been significant is it’s not just a conversation with large enterprises, it’s SMBs as well,” he explained.
Small businesses haven’t had access to enterprise type solutions in the past, but Microsoft offers the same types of solutions to businesses of all sizes, so this is where the biggest shift has been.
The accessibility of cloud-based technology has been coupled with the realization that businesses need more flexibility when it comes to communication – a lesson learned, in part, when many were unprepared for remote working in 2020.
But cloud phone systems are not without their complexities. Telles said that licencing is one factor that dominates conversations with customers looking to add voice services to Teams.
net2phone keeps it simple by offering two Teams solutions. The first is a native Direct Routing solution for Teams; and the second combines its own UCaaS offering integrated with Teams.
The Direct Routing solution is for businesses that are going all-in with Teams and comfortable managing the wider Microsoft environment, either through internal IT staff or with a channel partner.
In this case, businesses manage the PBX functionality from within the Teams Admin Center and net2phone provides call path trunking into that environment, along with some of its own benefits such as unlimited calling plans and contingency plans in case Teams suffers an outage.
The second option, Telles explained, is designed to be more flexible for businesses.
“net2phone’s UCaaS plus Direct Routing option provides a hybrid and redundant solution, which gives customer more flexibility and scalability for their business needs,” he said.
